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Exactly the same thing holds good for the sequence of physical states of matter which we are considering here. Observation of this sequence with the bodily eyes alone will show nothing but a reduction of the specific gravity of the material concerned. He who is at pains to observe also with the eye of the spirit, however, is aware of a positive increase of lightness going hand in hand with a decrease of heaviness. Regarded thus, the three ponderable conditions form what Goethe would have called a ‘spiritual ladder’. As ‘rungs’ of such a ladder they clearly point to a fourth rung – that is, a fourth state in which levity so far prevails over gravity that the substance no longer has any weight at all. This picture of the fourfold transformation of matter calls for an inquiry into the transition between the third and fourth states, corresponding to the well-known transitions between the

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Our observations have led us to a concept of heat essentially different from that held by modern science. Science looks on heat simply as a condition of ponderable matter. We, on the contrary, are led to recognize in heat a fourth condition into which matter may pass on leaving the three ponderable conditions, and out of which it may emerge on the way to ponderability.

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Before showing that such transitions are actually known in nature, it may be well to discuss here an objection which the customary way of thinking might plausibly advance against our whole method. It could be said that to assume a continuation of the sequence of the three ponderable conditions in the manner suggested is justified only if, as solids can be turned into liquids and these into gases, so gases could be transformed into a fourth condition and, conversely, be produced from the latter.

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In reply it can be said that the fact of our not being able at present to change gases artificially into pure heat does not justify the conclusion that this is in principle impossible. We know from previous considerations that the earth has reached an evolutionary stage at which all elements, including fire, have in certain degree grown ‘old’. This applies in quite a special degree to the manipulations to which man, led by his death-bound consciousness, has learnt to submit matter in his laboratories. To decide what is possible or not possible in nature, therefore, can by no means be left to the judgment of laboratory research. As is shown by the following instance, taken from the realm of vegetable life, a case of the creation of matter ‘out of nothing’ is already known to biology – though biology, bound in its concepts to the Law of Conservation, shows some natural reluctance to recognize the true significance of the phenomenon.

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The plant which performs this strange feat is the Tillandsia usneoides, indigenous to tropical America, and generally known as ‘Spanish Moss’. Its peculiarity is that it grows and flourishes without taking from its support any material whatsoever for the building up of its substance. Its natural habitat is the dry bark of virgin forest trees. Since civilization invaded its home it has acquired the habit of growing even on telegraph wires, which has given it the popular name of ‘telegraph tresses’. Chemical analysis of this plant shows the presence of an average of 17 per cent iron, 36 per cent silicic acid and 1·65 per cent phosphoric acid. This applies to samples taken from districts where the rainwater – the only source from which the plant could extract these substances in physical form – contains at most 1·65 per cent iron, 0·01 per cent silicic acid and no phosphoric acid at all.

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The Tillandsia phenomenon is to a certain extent reminiscent of another well-known plant activity. This is the process of assimilation of carbon from the carbon dioxide of the air. If we leave aside the change in the chemical combination which the carbon undergoes, there remains the picture of the plant drawing this matter to itself from its environment and at the same time subjecting it to a spatial condensation. A similar but even more far-reaching process is exhibited by the Tillandsia as regards the three substances referred to above. From the conditions given, it follows that the plant cannot possibly get these substances elsewhere than out of the surrounding atmosphere, and that in drawing upon them it submits them to a high degree of condensation. A special role, however, is played by the phosphorus, which shows that the assimilative power of the plant is sufficient to transform phosphorus from a physically not traceable state into one of spatially bounded materiality. Following Goethe in his coining of the concept of ‘spiritual anastomosis’ for the pollinating process of plants, we can here speak of ‘spiritual assimilation’.

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In this respect Tillandsia provides an instance ‘worth a thousand, bearing all within itself. For what nature here unmistakably demonstrates serves as an eye-opener to a universal fact of the plant kingdom and of nature in general. The problem of the so-called trace-elements may serve as an illustration of this.

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Modern agricultural chemistry has found of a number of chemical elements that their presence in the soil in scarcely traceable amounts is necessary in order to enable the plant to unfold healthily its latent characteristics. All sorts of deficiencies in cultivated plants have led to a recognition that the soil is impoverished of certain elements by intensive modern cultivation, and that it is to the lack of these elements that the deficiencies are due. Much work has meanwhile been done in classifying the various deficiencies and in devising ways of giving the soil chemical substitutes for what is lacking.

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A large part of the work here involved could be saved were it only to be acknowledged that the soil owes the natural occurrence of the proper elements to a process which the plants themselves bring about in the soil, if men refrain from hindering them by cleverly thought-out methods of cultivation which fail to reckon with the nature of a living organism.

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Let us be clear what it is that occurs when a plant exhibits any of the observed abnormalities. Expressed in a Goethean manner, these are the consequence of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. That which Ruskin called the ‘spirit’ of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his aphorism ‘Stand by Form against Force’ (by ‘form’ all the peculiar qualities of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure. Now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane, spirit requires ‘young’ matter – that is, matter which is either in, or has just emerged from, a purely dynamic state. Normally a definite spiritual type co-ordinates the dynamic functions present in the superphysical sphere of nature in the manner required to give the plant-organism its appropriate form. As, through the action of the type, these functions are brought down from the sphere of levity into that of gravity, they condense to the corresponding material elements and thus reach the soil in material form via the physical organism of the plant.